How Do You Move A Bookstore? With A Human Chain, Book By BookShoulder to shoulder, they formed a line 500 feet long: from the stockroom of the old shop, down the sidewalk, and onto the shop floor of the new store.

People pass books down a chain to help the bookstore October Books move to a new location on Sunday in Southampton, England.
October Books
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October Books

People pass books down a chain to help the bookstore October Books move to a new location on Sunday in Southampton, England.

October Books

When October Books, a small radical bookshop in Southampton, England, was moving to a new location down the street, it faced a problem. How could it move its entire stock to the new spot, without spending a lot of money or closing down for long?

The shop came up with a clever solution: They put out a call for volunteers to act as a human conveyor belt.

Community members moved more than 2,000 books in an hour.
October Books
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October Books

Community members moved more than 2,000 books in an hour.

October Books

When the great bookchain began, she was in the stockroom. "I was handing books to people without actually seeing the entire of it. So it was only after about 20 minutes I actually go out into the road and saw the extent of the people," she said.

October Books, founded in 1977, calls itself "more than a bookshop." It sells political and current affairs books, fiction and children's books, and and some food and fair-trade products.

But as it struggled to pay rising rents, it had launched a campaign over the summer to raise $400,000 to buy a space of its own: an old bank building. And raise it they did, through donations, crowdfunding, and people who donated money as "loanstock" — the shop will repay them the money that they've lent after one, five, or 10 years depending the loan terms.

"There's been people who've been visiting us and buying books from us for 40 years" as the store has moved around the city numerous times, Brown said. "So a lot of people feel quite invested in it as a thing."